THE REAL DIRT: Coneflowers, or echinacea, go beyond the colour purple

Cheyenne Spirit is a unique coneflower in that it comes in many colours.

It is a very good thing that I don’t have to choose only one perennial for my gardens, but if I were forced to grow only one, the choice would be for purple coneflowers, echinacea.

Of course, we all know that purple coneflowers are now not only purple, thanks to huge leaps in plant breeding in recent years.

The species that started it all is called the purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, a native of much of North America and a species beloved by songbirds for its seedheads and by pollinators for its nectar and pollen.

Plus, it blooms like gangbusters, comes in a rainbow of colours and flowers in August and September, when the big flush of earlier blooming echinaceas is done. And some of the cultivars are fragrant, and all make great cut flowers. What’s not to love?

Echinaceas do best in rich, moist but well-drained soil, in full sun. In a more shaded site, they won’t bloom as prolifically as they do in sun, and the plants may stretch and have spindly stems from reaching for sunlight.

Echinaceas are drought tolerant once they are established, and by established I mean after a year or so when they’ve been able to put down lots of roots. I can’t tell you the number of people that plant something, water it once and forget to ever water it again, and in our hotter, dryer summers, that is basically plant murder. So water your new plants well, and keep watering them whenever the ground is dry around them — before they wilt, preferably.

Well-drained soil is absolutely crucial for coneflowers because, in nature, they are plants of the North American prairie, where soil is often poor and dry. If you plant coneflowers in heavy clay, they’ll do fine during the growing season, but they are very apt to die out over winter. So if your soil is soggy, it’s best to plant coneflowers in a raised bed.

The other most important recommendation for growing coneflowers is one that isn’t popular, and that is to cut the flowers and flower buds off when you first plant a new coneflower.

You want them to put their energy into getting established, which means filling out their root system and developing a strong crown of foliage and shoots.

You can get around this requirement if you buy larger, second- or third-year plants from a local nursery but bear in mind these more mature plants will also be more expensive.

Deer can be inclined to nibble tender new shoots and leaves in late spring and early summer. They don’t seem to care for the spiky central cone of the flowers, however, so once the plants are blooming you may be lucky enough to have them left alone.

There are so many new coneflowers coming out it’s hard to pick one favourite. If I must choose, it’s a tie between the many-coloured Cheyenne Spirit, the double-flowered Supreme Cantelope and the fragrant, green-flowered Green Jewel.

So I asked staff at various nurseries around Nova Scotia for favourite coneflowers: